Mercedes-Benz SLC-Class 2016 Review

Mercedes-Benz SLC 300
First Drive
Nice, France

Before you ask the obvious question, yes, this car used to be called the SLK; pretty obvious, when you look at its short overhangs and sharp outline. After about 700,000 SLKs over the last 20 years, Benz has changed the name to the SLC, just so people know its two-seat convertible lines up with the C-Class.

The new version (a facelift, really) debuted at the Detroit motor show, in January this year, and comes complete with everything from a Nissan-Renault-sourced 1.6-litre petrol four pot in the SLC 180 to the AMG version, with a turbocharged V6.

The rest of the SLC family start with a 500Nm version of the 250 d, with a 2.1-litre turbo-diesel family four so that it has something to sell in the UK, through the 200 and 300 versions of the same 2.0-litre turbo petrol-powered four.

We’ve focused on the SLC 300 because, frankly, it seemed more fun than the diesel. The diesel was strong and surprisingly quick (getting to 100km/h in 6.6sec), but the lumpy noise of the Benz diesel (already outmoded by the E-Class’s new family diesel four) doesn’t neatly equate to roof-down driving, where you hear more of the motor than normal.

That’s not a problem with the 1991cc four-cylinder petrol motor. It’s smooth and strong. With its 370Nm arriving at only 1300rpm, it has a diesel-style character in town and at low engine speeds, while it still spins up to 6000rpm, with the 180kW of power arriving at 5500rpm.

That’s exactly 45kW and 75Nm more than the same engine delivers in the SLC 200, and you can assume those gaps have been arrived at over croissants and ginseng-laced cappuccinos at the marketing department, not stale sandwiches and a thermos of International Roast across at engineering.

Obviously, the SLC 300 is the quicker of the two, posting a 5.8sec sprint to 100km/h to head the 200 by 1.2sec and it’s the only one of the two to need a speed limiter at 250km/h, with the SLC 200 missing out by 10km/h.

The fuel-pump cost of the extra power, torque and speed is an inconsequential 0.1L/100km more than the 200, which clocks an NEDC number of 5.7L/100km.

Both the SLC 300 and the SLC 200 use the nine-speed automatic, though the 200’s standard unit is a six-speed manual (which is sadly unavailable on the faster model). The trade off back the other way, besides speed, is that the 300 has a standard sports exhaust, which is optional on the junior version of this powertrain.

Beneath the skin, the chassis is virtually unchanged, using some slight upgrades of the suspension in tuning, more than hardware, and in some pieces of software.

While all SLC models come with the Dynamic Select button to switch the driving modes between Comfort, Sport, Sport+, Eco and Individual, an optional Dynamic handling package lowers the ride height another 10mm, adds adaptive dampers and ties them in to Dynamic Select and sharper steering.

And that’s the package we walked into with the SLC 300. It might not be the cheapest point in the family, but it’s the sweet spot of the SLC range.

At 1505kg, it’s probably heavier than you expect a car like this to be (it’s almost half as heavy again as the MX-5, for example), but the upside is that it’s only 50kg heavier than the SLC 200 (though about 30kg of that is because the slower car is weighed with its lighter manual gearbox attached).

The balance is there, and it picks it up almost from when you step inside. All the SLC models get the diamond-style grille now, rather than the traditional single wing with the central three-pointed star.

There are new Intelligent LED Lights, while the Adaptive High-Beam Assist Plus system, which lets you remain on high beam and still not dazzle oncoming traffic, is an option. A new set of lights sits on the rump, too.

The roof now folds up or down at up to 40km/h and it now has a light to warn you if the separator piece isn’t locked into place to shrink the 335-litre boot space enough to give the roof’s solid pieces somewhere to go.

It also gets the AIRSCARF, which blows warming air onto the necks of both occupants, and it makes a massive, comforting difference when you’re climbing the Alps Maritimes in southern France.

While the interior is clean and crisp, it lacks some of the more contemporary bits and pieces, like a starter button. Instead, the driver has to twist an old-school key. The multimedia entertainment system has been upgraded, with a 7.0-inch display, internet access (only when it’s stationary) and two USB ports. A new 4.5-inch TFT display screen now sits behind the traditional pair of tube dials in the instrument cluster, too.

For those paying less attention, the SLC facelift delivers Active Brake Assist as a standard tool, which can autonomously brake the car to reduce collision risk and severity.

It gets other tweaks, too, like recognizing when a child is in the front seat and automatically deactivating the passenger airbag and having an optional reversing camera, even though the rear bumper is about a metre behind the driver’s ear.

It’s an easy car to get comfortable in. There’s enough legroom for taller people and enough kneeroom for the shorter folks and the steering column is nicely centred, with a very straight-on driving position.

The engine starts smoothly and quietly, quickly settling into its idle even when it’s cold. And it was.

The nine-speed automatic is an unsung jewel in the new generation of Benzes and it’s the same here. You pull the short lever into Drive and it slots, unnoticed, into gear and it does almost the same thing every time it changes gear. Except in Sport mode.

Normally, in heavy traffic, the SLC 300’s powertrain is calm, smooth and unruffled. It’s strong at low engine speeds and it’s always ready to snap off another 100Nm to dive into a gap or change lanes when you’re co-driver is a bit late on the call.

It uses the Magic Sky lights to go from a clear glass roof to an opaque dark blue one at the push of a button, which seems a bit pointless when you can just flip the roof back completely in a handful of seconds, but Benz insists people like it.

It’s a nicer machine again when you clear the traffic and move into the hills. Push along briskly and it seems at its best, with the gearbox naturally shifting into roughly the right gear by itself and the engine happy to work from the middle of its range upwards.

The balance is also there, with the car sweeping through faster bends in a convincing representation of something with a far longer wheelbase.

And it’s just nice. It’s an altogether pleasant place to be.

But that changes. Push it harder, out to its limits of adhesion and beyond and the exercise is too much for the chassis architecture, which bucks and flexes and jiggles, fighting the road and the twisting forces as it fights to keep the suspension working in the planes originally conceived by its engineers.

It does a reasonable job of it, too, but it’s not so enjoyable. There’s too much flexing and wobbling going on around you, even if it is still capable of generating some significant corner-to-corner pace.

The engine sings hard, the shifts snap up and down nicely in manual mode (via steering wheel-mounted paddles) and the stability control is a bit intrusive, limiting drive on corner exits, but its game can be lifted by switching it to a higher level.

It can flit from apex to apex, in slower and faster corners, with the sort of pace that would run with an MX-5, but it’s much harder work, for far less driving reward. At the extremes, the movement of everything around you lets you know that you’re working the car beyond its comfort zone. Even if it manages the job without ever looking like it will ever do anything nasty to you, it also never imparts to you that it’s having as much fun as you’d like it all to be.

That’s why, despite Benz’s insistence that this is the sports car of choice in the Benz convertible armoury, it’s really not, and anybody after a true roofless sports-car experience needs to leave the brand.

But for those who are happy to live beneath that last couple of tenths of its performance envelope, who don’t crave the sweetness of coherence you get from the best in the class, the SLC remains what the SLK always was: a roofless convertible two-seater for those who don’t drive very quickly most of the time.

2016 Mercedes-Benz SLC 300 pricing and specifications:
Price: TBA
Engine: 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbo-petrol
Output: 180kW/370Nm
Transmission: Nine-speed automatic
Fuel: 5.8L/100km (NEDC Combined)
CO2: 134g/km (NEDC Combined)
Safety Rating: TBA